Focus and Execution
Everything comes down to execution and the @insightpoolHQ team are the junkyard pit bulls when it comes to that. Doesn’t matter how cool you are.
— Devon Wijesinghe (@DevonWijesinghe) July 18, 2013
That’s a great quote by Devon today. More often than not, execution separates the winners from the losers. Focus and execution in startups is directly tied into the purpose of this blog to discuss how startup outcomes depend upon more than just luck. (I also love the tweet for the pride he shows in his own team!)
Related to this tweet, Sam Altman recently posted on the topic of how to get things done. He had a number of great quotes that we’ve talked about at AccelerEyes regularly over the years:
- “Most early-stage startup founders do a bad job of getting the company to focus on just two or three critical priorities—they chase whatever shiny new object appears that day.”
- My co-founder, James Malcolm, has often used that exact phrase “shiny new object” to talk about some of the ideas we have had, and that has helped us be relatively self-restrained compared to many other startups, especially in our market. Right-sized focus is vital to success.
- “The Y Combinator version of focus is “write code and talk to users”.”
- What a great simple vision of what needs to get done. I always say that only two things matter: building stuff and selling stuff.
- “For whatever reasons, many founders love to spend time on anything else—worrying about the details of corporate structures, interviewing lawyers, doing a really good job bookkeeping, etc. All of this pretending-to-run-a-company gets in the way of actually running a company.”
- It’s especially important for the CEO to find this balance. I have tried to spend minimal amount of time on “anything else” while not sacrificing attention to important details.
- “Successful startups usually find that their biggest problem is hiring.”
- I’ve written a ton about our hiring process this year and this quote especially resonated with me.
Finally, in a post by Hypepotamus today about David Cummings, it is clear that he is a machine when it comes to focus and execution. I’ve heard him referred to as “Startup Robot.” I think that’s a high compliment and means that he’s a machine at execution in startup environments. Go read the quotes people say about David and be impressed 🙂
What are your thoughts on focus and execution? How do you ignore the non-essentials in your startup?